Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s $30 million plan to fight antisemitism in the Big Apple boosts funding for non-profit organizations that have zero ties to the Jewish community — including a rabid anti-Israel group.
Hizzoner’s Strategy to Combat Antisemitism released last week comes with a $6.4 million cash infusion for Partners Against the Hate (P.A.T.H.), doubling last year’s funding for the taxpayer-backed community grant program.
The initiative, which was launched in 2021 under the city’s Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes, partners with a core six grassroots organizations that include the Jewish Community Relations Council, as well as various other religious and ethnic groups.
One of the top advocacy groups involved in P.A.T.H. — which works to prevent hate crimes across the city through community programs and grants — is the anti-Israel Arab American Association of New York.
The Brooklyn-based group, which was run for over a decade by Mamdani’s mentor and pro-Palestinian firebrand Linda Sarsour, repeatedly cheered on the anti-Israel encampment at Columbia University and other protests following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
The organization pocketed $3.3 million in city funding between 2017 and 2024, the Washington Examiner first reported, citing data analyzed by the transparency watchdog group OpenTheBooks.
P.A.T.H. partners also include the 67th Precinct Clergy Council, aka “the Godsquad,” the LGBT NYC Anti-Violence Project, the Asian American Federation and the Hispanic Federation.
Mamdani has been under pressure since taking office to address the rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes throughout the five boroughs.
NYPD crime data showed an 8% jump in antisemitic attacks through August, with anti-Jewish hate crimes specifically accounting for an outsized majority of the reports.
Before taking office, Mamdani campaigned with Sarsour — an early supporter of the then-relatively unknown Queens assemblyman — on arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu despite the mayor having no authority over cuffing foreign dignitaries.
His long-awaited 33-page plan to combat antisemitism was criticized by some in the Jewish community for failing to even mention the word Zionism, making only a passing mention of Israel.
More than two dozen Jewish leaders decried the report and called on the Mamdani administration to re-issue a plan that would include addressing Zionism.
